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Monthly Archives: April 2013

* Facebook rejects an ad criticizing a political group co-founded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. (washingtonpost.com)
* Andrew Sullivan says blogs will never die; it’s magazines that are in trouble. (andrewsullivan.com)* HuffPo, AOL, Arianna and seniors who “borrow” restaurant salt and pepper shakers. (adage.com)
* CNN’s total viewership in April was up nearly 80% compared with the same month a year ago. (nytimes.com)
* There was plenty to hate about CNN’s “Crossfire” in its late years, but… (newrepublic.com)
* TheStreet.com’s CEO got $1.3 million last year; co-founder Jim Cramer received $1.47 million. (talkingbiznews.com)
* How the Register’s Cathy Taylor plans to cover Orange County from Washington, D.C. (ajr.org)
* Documentary team takes cover when gunmen open fire in Philadelphia. (guncrisis.org)
* A sports journalist doesn’t care for a cartoonist’s Manti Te’o jab. (shermanreport.com)
* Twelve U.S. Knight Fellows are selected. (The program at Stanford received 100 applications.) (stanford.edu)
* Go ahead and ask Warren Buffett a question about newspaper investments and see if he’ll answer. (fortune.cnn.com)
* A preview of Reuters’ new website: (reuters.com)

I’m delighted to announce that Jennifer Forsyth is appointed US Editor. In this newly enhanced role, the latest step in our reorganization and integration process, Jennifer will lead the combined U.S. reporting and editing teams of the Journal and Newswires as we continue to broaden our coverage of general U.S. news across all platforms, in areas including economics, politics, education and other topics./CONTINUESRead More

USA Today publisher Larry Kramer tells his staff that while their paper’s print circulation continues to drop, its “readership in total across all platforms is growing dramatically” and that when measuring digital audiences “we are ahead of the competition.”

He adds: “We have an audience of more than 50 million while NYT is under 48 million and Wall Street Journal is under 25 million. (And let it be noted that NYT includes the Boston Globe in these numbers while WSJ includes Marketwatch and AllThingsD, so we are even further ahead).”

Circulation numbers have been in the news today and I wanted to share some thoughts on where we are. We understand that consumers’ news consumption habits have changed and we are changing with them. As expected, USA TODAY has seen another decrease in our print circulation numbers as reported by the Alliance for Audited Media (AAM), formerly the Audit Bureau of Circulation. The spokesperson for the AAM expressed to media himself that their report does not accurately reflect the full picture anymore. In fact, USA TODAY’s readership in total across all platforms is growing dramatically. Read More

Romenesko reader @sportsfeeder1 sends today’s Express cover (it’s a Washington Post publication) and an AP photo from the Celtics’ Media Day last September.

“Not that it bothers me much but most papers couldn’t find decent image of Collins in Wiz uniform so they went with the AP photo of him Celtics gear,” he writes. “Why DC Express couldn’t do that and call it a day? Who knows?”

UPDATE: “The photo illustration credit is on the left side, bottom, next to the photo and the text runs vertically so it’s hard to read — especially in the resolution size avail from the Newseum site,” writes Kevin O’Reilly. ” “It reads: AP and Thinkstock/Express illustration.”

“We call on Tribune to make a pledge that they’ll only sell to a buyer that will protect the objectivity of the news product by making a public commitment to doing so,” say the Newspaper Guild and Communications Workers of America.

Their release:

The Newspaper Guild & Communications Workers of America Call on
Tribune Company to Protect Newspapers’ Integrity as Sale Proceeds

Recently you’ve seen many petitions asking that the Koch brothers not be allowed to buy the Tribune Company’s newspapers. We understand why the Kochs breed this distrust. They are active political proponents of harsh right-wing positions. We’re also not certain that Tribune will listen to anything but money when the final decision is made.
What we do know is that great papers publish credible, trusted journalism online and on the printed page. Whoever comes to own these mastheads needs to understand that protecting newsrooms from ideological taint is no small thing. The future of American journalism depends on the ability to print truth, not opinion.

We call on Tribune to make a pledge that they’ll only sell to a buyer that will protect the objectivity of the news product by making a public commitment to doing so. The Newspaper Guild-CWA and the Communications Workers of America seek your support in this goal.

“We have simply run out of money,” says editor and publisher John Hammer, who owns the paper with his brother. “The Rhinoceros Times is hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.”
This week’s issue is the last — a surprise to the conservative paper’s staff. “They said yesterday we were going to have a meeting, which is rare for us,” says columnist Scott Yost. “So I knew something was happening.”

Hammer appealed for donations in his farewell column: “We need money to pay our creditors. I guarantee all the money raised will be used to pay debts. If you have been reading The Rhino from the beginning, that’s 21 years of free newspapers. We ask you to consider paying $1 for each of those years and sending us a check for $21 dollars. …But right now we are deep in a financial hole and every bit helps.”

Starting this summer, the Times-Picayune’s TPStreet will be sold on newsstands Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays and cost 75 cents, says editor Jim Amoss. The New Orleans paper currently has a Wednesday, Friday and Sunday home-delivered print edition.

In addition, a special electronic edition will be available every morning to three-day subscribers of the home-delivered newspaper. Sunday-only subscribers will have access to the Sunday e-edition. The e-edition will offer an exact electronic version of The Times-Picayune on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays (the Early Edition of Sunday) and Sundays, and of the TPStreet tabs on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.

“In TPStreet, we sought to develop a publication that would address our single-copy readers and also respond to a repeated request from our home-delivery subscribers for a front-to-back newspaper reading experience in the e-edition on days we don’t offer home delivery,” says publisher Ricky Mathews.

A.H. Belo CEO Robert W. Decherd says “the significant proceeds from the Riverside office building sale will provide additional opportunities in 2013 for increasing shareholder returns and diversifying our revenue streams.” The building was meant for about 700 people, but now holds less than half that number, says publisher Ronald Redfern.

I’m deeply troubled by the Cincinnati Enquirer’s decision to name the 17-year-old boy who tried to kill himself in class yesterday. Especially since I could find no accompanying editorial explaining why they did so against the express wishes of his school and his family. Makes me wonder if there was any discussion at all about the ethics of the situation. I thought it was worth bringing it to your attention.

I understand the need to break the general rule on not reporting suicides or suicide attempts given that he shot himself in a classroom and the entire school was briefly put on lockdown. But there is no journalistic merit to exposing a troubled young man who did not harm anyone except himself to this level of permanent public scrutiny. They even included his middle initial and sent out a breaking news e-mail alert.

I was about to ask editor Carolyn Washburn about her decision, then I noticed she posted an explanation at 10:22 a.m. – apparently after others questioned naming the boy. “It was a difficult decision,” she writes, but “this was an unusual situation, an extremely public situation.”

Washburn

A young man brought a gun into a school. He discharged it in a crowded classroom. There was chaos for an entire community. And one factor – though not the only one – is that students and parents at the school already know who he is; school administrators named him to parents. What will be important now is helping people understand what happened as appropriately as we can, insights that we hope will help other families and their children.